"Especially in our situation with so much mining in our area ... a lot of small government areas that have been caught a little bit wanting in previous years," he said.

"With all the mining happening there's been a huge amount of destruction on our roads caused by companies doing the initial exploration and obviously that's not their fault but we have to make sure that those roads are maintained."

Councillor Beveridge says Mr Crawley knows how to get the best deal for ratepayers from mining companies.

"It's alright when a mine is up and running then you can start lobbying them, pushing their rates up and getting a bit more of a balanced approach to the ratings system but a lot of the exploration in the area we have to play catch-up and start getting some money back into the coffers to pay for that," he said.